When I was a child, it was still called Armistice day. And if we asked what Armistice Day was, they would say, "On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour,..." and explain it. In those days, Memorial Day was only for the Civil War (although our town commemorated the Revolutionary War dead as well). A decision was made to change one of the memorial days to remember all veterans. Nothing nefarious at the time.

Someone who knows something please chime in - Why isn't US invasion and occupation of Afgahnistan and military incursions into Pakistan denounced adn prosecuted as War Crimes?

Because they are not, at least under the Geneva Conventions and additional protocols. The Geneva Conventions are not jus ad bellum. Individual acts may be denounced as war crimes, like indiscriminate bombing, or torture, but the justification of the war itself is not something the Geneva Conventions have an opinion on.

Too damned right the Americans will have to do what's right. But the right they have to do will be a very different right than you think it is.

This is the single valid criticism of my statement that's appeared, namely that you agree with it, but disagree on what's right. Fair enough. At least you didn't try to pretend there was a reason why Americans shouldn't do what is right, or should always have an ulterior motive. Thanks, I guess.

FBS

1)No.

2)Question invalidated by conflating in Iraq. You assume my opinions on the two are the same. Probably from an assumption of "war supporter". Wrong assumption.

3) Ulterior motives: e.g. U.S. power, Oil, U.S. defense, power politics, totally uninformed anti-war movements that demand mutually contradictory outcomes, etc. Building institutions to move a country out of perpetual war is a right thing. Working to repatriate 3.5 million refugees and 800,000 IDPs is a right thing. Attracting diaspora intelligensia back to the country to run the place is a right thing. Helping countries emerge from war is a right thing. This isn't a tough definition.

SBS

1) No.

2) The price for addressing those problems in the world that are dire and need to be addressed as opposed to cruelly neglecting them is trivial in American budgetary terms. Cf. Jeffrey Sachs.

3) One would have had to reply affirmatively to question SBS 1) for this question to make sense. I did not.

4) Failed states are places where the state infrastructure has collapsed, or is non-existent to the point where the place cannot extricate itself from violent cycles and lacks the ability to form the necessary infrastructure for peace. People argue about how to measure that.

5) No. The rest of the question is predicated on a "Yes" answer and therefore is not answered.

6) One solution is validly not to make promises. I do believe that promises to Americans should also be kept. The rest of the "question" is a statement, requires no reply.

If you were convinced that more than half of the Aghan population wanted U.S. troops out of their country, would that change your views?

It would change my views as to whether or not American troops could provide peacekeeping for the humanitarian aid, just like I currently don't agree that Indian peacekeepers or Pakistani peacekeepers would work, contrary to rrheard. I agree with workers for the UN and other NGOs however that somebody's security provisions have to be there to stabilize the country. And I would charge you, while you're gathering that statistic, to see whether the Afghans want to live under the Taliban, or just consider it inevitable since they think the U.S. doesn't want to fix the place. The U.S. didn't want to fix the place until this year, and hasn't made up its mind this year, so they wouldn't be off base for thinking so.

Would it change my views that the U.S. should live up to its promised obligations there? No. Would it change my feeling that people here are very weird for believing that somebody else should always do the peacekeeping, or that appeals to our current economic situation are just cruel? No. Sooner or later, the U.S. has got to live up to the ideal of doing the right thing, just because it's the right thing, and not for some ulterior motive. And Americans have to understand that even unemployed and without health care, they are frequently much better off than people elsewhere. Plan a tour of Howrah if you don't believe it.

And yes, I do consider you to be an isolationist. Not everybody that opposes the war there is an isolationist, but I consider you to be one, since you've argued that ending U.S. involvement is obligatory on grounds completely separate from any of the justifications, or lack thereof, of any war, just the length of time the U.S. has been involved in war, and no other reason. That automatically means there are no just wars possible at certain times, ergo war should be opposed during such times even if justified by any logic whatsoever, ergo isolationism.